Pallas Projects - Artists Announced—Artist-Initiated Projects 20/21

Artists Announced—Artist-Initiated Projects 20/21

Pallas Projects/Studios are delighted to announce the participating artists in our programme of Artist-Initiated Projects 20/21. The series of 10 x 3-week exhibitions from August 2020 will present exhibitions of new work by: Barry Mulholland, Jane Cassidy, Katherine Sankey, John Conway, Pat Curran, Róisín White, Suzanne O'Haire, Florencia Caiazza, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Niamh Hannaford & Tara Carroll.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 10 x 3-week exhibitions taking place from August 2020. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.

Artist-Initiated Projects aims to act as an incubator for early careers, and support artists' practices at crucial stages, providing a platform for artists to produce and exhibit challenging work across all art forms. The model of short-run exhibitions with a relatively short turnaround time of 3–6 months is an alternative to the normal institutional model, where the process of studio visit to exhibition can take several years. Shorter lead-in times allow the programme to be quick and responsive, reflect what artists are currently making, and encourage experimentation and risk-taking.

Exhibitions will run Thurs–Sat for 3 weeks, with openings taking place on the first Thursday evening. Exhibition dates:

Pallas Projects/Studios is one of Ireland's longest running artist-run spaces, with a dedicated tradition over 22 years towards the professional development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment, providing opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists to develop and exhibit new work. PP/S have established a nationwide and international reputation among artists and organisations, and a public profile through successful and critically engaged exhibitions, publishing, collaborations and partnerships, and education programmes for schools. Recent projects include the 4-year research project and publication 'Artist-Run Europe', published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven in 2016, and the annual 'Periodical Review' exhibition now in its tenth year.

Responding to the current political crisis, Border referendums and Brexit fears - Barry Mulholland develops a site-specific installation that re-purposes visual propaganda, offering an alternative audience experience to new political spaces we now find ourselves in. Working towards the idea that the ‘political’ can manifest as an object, that expands original content beyond intended meaning and towards a greater spatial and visual experience. Barry Mulholland is a Belfast based Visual Artist and studio member at Flax Art Studios, Belfast. Holds a MA in Visual Arts Practices at IADT, and BA Fine & Applied Art at Ulster University. Previously a co-director of Platform Arts Belfast. Recent solo shows include Bogeymen, exhibited as part of TACTICAL MAGIC curated by Kerry Guinan at TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, 2019. Awards include, the Taylor Art Award 2012 at the RDS Visual Arts Awards, Dublin. Currently supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Jane Cassidy is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator from Galway. Trained in music and visual art, Jane earned a Masters in Music and Media Technologies from TCD and an MFA in Digital Art from Tulane University in New Orleans. Jane is interested in exploring synesthesia, visual music, and audio-visual immersive environments. In her immersive film, The Thin Veil, music moves in synchrony with luscious slow-motion visuals of the tide. The film presents a mesmerizing earthly cosmos through the infinite complexities of sand and water. Recent exhibitions include the Montgomery Museum of Art, Alabama, the University of New Orleans, Louisiana, Currents New Media Festival, New Mexico, the Art and Culture Centre/Hollywood, Florida, live visuals for Animal Collective at the Music Box in New Orleans, and Making Space at the Galway International Arts Festival. Jane is currently the Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Boston College in Massachusetts.

Katherine Sankey uses the parallel concepts of plumbing and tree parts as water conduits to engage with ideas about mutation, evolution and human supply. She is a 2020 Fire Station Sculpture Bursary Award recipient and gave a 2020 ‘Plinth Politics’ lecture in Feb at the RHA Dublin. Recent groupshows: Charlottenborg Kunsthal Spring Exhibition 2020, (Copenhagen, Denmark); RUA RED Winter Show, Tallaght (- winning the Solo Award 2020), TULCA 2019 – Tactical Magic (Galway), 189 th RHA Annual Exhibition (Dublin); CAST, Luan Gallery (Athlone) 2018. She has also had solo exhibitions at BWA Galleries (Krakow, Lublin & Wroclaw, Poland), Galeria Pryzmat (Krakow, Poland), Richard Demarco Gallery (Edinburgh). Upcoming in 2020 are: Invited artist RHA Annual in May, The LAB cube space in June, PLATFORM 20 at Draíocht in July and the RUA RED Solo Award in December.

John Conway is an emerging visual artist working extensively in community and health settings through socially engaged research, collaborative making, the making of solo works, curation and project production. Through his practice, John considers the capacity of visual art, and the artist, in non-traditional settings. He is motivated by ongoing concerns about art's role in community settings, and how this is experienced and validated by individuals and communities inside and outside of the art sphere.

John will produce new work in response to the completion of the new Central Mental Hospital (CMH) in Portrane, and the siting of this new institution and community on the existing area. This work is founded on a longterm body of work and research with patients of the Dundrum CMH and family members of patients. A special edition of Fingal Arts Office's Resort Residency will support John to engage with the local setting and develop his work.

Pat Curran grew up in Dolphin House flats and the Liberties. An early school leaver he returned to formal education in early middle age. In 2014 Pat graduated from NCAD with an MFA in painting. Pat’s open studio practice is an exchange between him and local people. His work reflects how inner city Dublin life is changing and how it contributes to a wider conversation about class, social justice and access to artistic expression. Pat often paints on found and collected objects that have a relevance to his painting subject. In 2019 Pat exhibited in Rua Red’s Winter Open and the group show CITIZEN ARTIST at Kilmainham Courthouse. Pat was resident in studio 468, St Andrew’s Community Centre Rialto from 2017 – 2018 and is now based in the Lodge, Inchicore, Dublin 8 with Common Ground.

Suzanne O’Haire conjures structures from impermanent matter; arrangements of acrobatically stacked, bundled or tentatively balanced forms suggesting utopian playgrounds or portals to an otherworld. Rummaging around for discarded junk is an everyday routine, typically playful objects or mesmeric surfaces. Fractured wing-mirrors; shiny artillery-like N20 bulbs; crushed soda cans spread like scabby spillages; chunks of glistening tarmac; confetti found strewn about like metallic fallout - it’s this kind of stuff that makes her tick. Notions of magical thinking underlie her assemblages, some explicitly performing as sigils willing to enchant, or potentially invoke, a force beyond to activate a state of change. Recent exhibitions include: TIME after [ ( ) ] after TIME, The Briggait, Glasgow (2019); peck o’ trouble (solo), Regency Town House, Brighton (2018); Exeter Contemporary Open (2017). Her work featured in Garageland 20 magazine and awards include: IMMA International Residency (2019); Mark Devereux Projects StudioBook17 (2017); MRBS Royal Society of Sculptors (2015).

Florencia Caiazza’s work acts as a reaction to a space or a time (an exhibition space, a new studio, city, a season, a specific weather). Finding the right medium is the starting point to develop a dialogue/reaction. Her exploration of materials often focuses on repetition, a patient accumulation of gestures and actions that become a sculptural volume. Recently she has been exploring with knitting, conceiving it as a practise of reflection about time itself, that demand a deceleration of the time of urban life and digitized humanities.
Caiazza lives and works between Buenos Aires/ Dublin. Studied Visual Arts at Regina Pacis Art School (Buenos Aires), and was part of theProgram for Artists at Torcuato Di Tella University, (Buenos Aires). Recent solo exhibitions: Color Municipal at HILO Gallery (Buenos Aires, 2019),
¿Cómo se conocieron? at Luis Adelantado Gallery (Valencia, Spain 2017).

Róisín White is a visual artist based in Dublin, working primarily with photography and sculpture, while incorporating drawing and collage into her practice. Róisín holds a degree in Photography from DIT, and certificates in Ceramics and Sculpture from NCAD. White’s work draws from archival and found materials, exploring modes of storytelling, as well as drawing from real and fictional experiences.
Recent exhibitions include “Picturing the Unseen” at The Finnish Museum of Photography, “Zeitgeist” Robert Capa Centre in Budapest, as well as solo shows at The Library Project and The Darkroom. Róisín was awarded an Emerging Artist Grant from DLR County Council in 2019, and a Dublin City Arts Office Bursary for a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín builds sculptural assemblages that may include instructional texts, mineral systems, growths and formal arrangements of objects that function as talismanic artefacts. She traces strands of myth, site, memory, ancestry and oral histories in the sculptural scenarios. Her work often emphasises care – of self and others, humans and animals, objects and materials.
Recent exhibitions include solo show, ‘Róisín, silver, rockie’, Palfrey Space, London, 2020, group shows include Caol Áit Cuid a Dó, Gallery 126 Galway 2020, MFA Goldsmiths 2019, Deptford X, London, 2018; Tulca, Galway, 2018; Water jets were used on the four corners of the building, Newington Art Space, London, 2018; a speech that showed the chair in the middle, Enclave, London, 2018; Dodecagon, Space Union, Seoul, 2017; solo show, Lamellae, The Lab, Dublin, 2016. She is current recipient of Goldsmiths MFA Graduate Almacantar Studio Bursary Award, Burren College of Art Emerging Irish Artist Award and Firestation residential studio awards 2020.

Niamh Hannaford and Tara Carroll come together as an artistic duo to connect with the strong sense of community within the auld heart of Dublin, the Liberties. Niamh and Tara will use the Liberty Market, a meeting place to trade goods and stories, as a site of historical reflection to draw on contemporary parallels. Immersing themselves within the community by hiring a market stall to host workshops and artistic interventions. The information gathered will be the catalyst for a new body of work comprising of art objects, installation, performance and video. These works, and the exhibition that follows, will be the result of the artists and the community playing together. Instagram: niamh_and_tara